By: Annika Harshbarger

After leaving her final class of sophomore year Cameron Gray planned to hangout with a friend. She made the decision to pass Dunn Meadow, a decision that changed her life. In this three part series listen to Cameron Gray tell her story of being arrested in Dunn Meadow for protesting Indiana Universities investments in companies supporting the genocide in Gaza, being held for a few hours in the Indiana University field house unable to use the bathroom, and spending several hours in a hot, packed, white tiled holding cell in the Monroe County Jail. 

TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FEATURE

Annika Harshbarger: Cameron Gray left her final class of sophomore year and planned to hangout with a friend. She made the decision to pass Dunn Meadow, a decision that changed her life. 

Cameron Gray: “It seemed like it was maybe 10 minutes from the time the cops first showed up on the meadow, to the moment of my arrest. I was one of the first people cuffed… So as I was about four o’clock, I was cuffed. Around six o’clock, we were transported to the jail. And then we were in the jail for about four hours. I was finally released at about 10:30.” 

Harshbarger: Cameron Gray a 20 year old journalism and gender studies student at Indiana University has been arrested for protesting the genocide in Gaza and banned from all IU property for a year. This is her story. 

Gray: “This was the day of my last final. It was my ASL final. I was feeling good. I love that class. So I wake up and you know, I, it’s unavoidable the news, So I was scanning social media, actually, before I went to class for any mention of any protests on campus. And I found nothing.”

Harshbarger: So she went to class. Took her final and left the building feeling great. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a protest at IU and thought if anything is happening today it’s in Dunn Meadow. 

Gray: “I actually changed course, usually, I would get off at like the biology stop for my bus. So I decided I’ll just pass Franklin Hall. See if there’s just anything. I get within, you know, 100 yards or however far away. And I start hearing chanting. And I’m like, I hear some drums. And I’m like, these are my people, you know, this is I have to do this.”

Harshbarger: Cameron canceled plans with a friend and stood on the outskirts of the protest too nervous to join, when she heard a girl say. 

Random girl: “Hey you want to join?”

Harshbarger: and Cameron said.

Gray: “ Yes, I would love to. I was just a little too nervous to go by myself.”

Gray: “I was completely unaware of what was going to come. I was completely unprepared. I happen to pass it on campus by some stroke of choosing a different bus stop. And then everything happened.”

Harshbarger: When Cameron arrived at the protest it was small and peaceful. There were three small tents and enough people to stand shoulder to shoulder around the perimeter. A little while later at around 3:30 p.m. counter protesters at the frat across the street from Dunn Meadow and at the Jewish cultural center, also known as Chabad house, started blasting music from large black speakers. Many protestors feel that this was an intentional act to drown out the chants of people in Dunn Meadow. 

Gray: “We would do our chants…at that time, we could barely hold a chant, you know, they start yelling into the microphone, and then the voice would kind of get lost to the wind”

Harshbarger: According to a letter shared by IU president Pamela Whitten on April 25, the day Cameron was arrested, the Indiana State Police were brought in as a law enforcement partner to remove tents. The letter backs the universities decision by saying quote “Our university must create space for meaningful dialogue, while ensuring that our campus is safe and welcoming to all, and that peaceful protest, as many experienced today, symbolizes our steadfastness to the free expression of ideas.” end quote 

Gray: “there was a, we, there was a small line of us on the field, you know, stretching from one end to the other. And someone yells something, and what they yelled has since been lost to me, but I turned my head and just advancing down the field. Grass Dunn Meadow, there are at least, you know, five rows of long, you know, long columns of shields, just marching, marching, marching towards us not ceasing, and then, you know, I see some more guys behind them. And I see some police over here. And it was I mean, it felt like there was like a five to one it was, you know, I was I was scared. I’m holding on to the two people next to me, you know, and I am very purposely yelling nothing inflammatory. Because I know, the cops, they look eager…I would chant Free Palestine…the police they’re just getting closer and closer. And you know, soon we’re almost chest to chest. And I don’t know what’s happening. You know, I’m looking in this cops eyes, and I’m just thinking like, you see me and I see you. And, you know, what are you about to do? Why? Why are you doing this? And the thing is, I don’t think any of them knew why they were there. Suddenly there are hands on me and a student who was next to me who I was locked up, locked arms with. And I think there’s maybe three or four police tugging on us. And you know, the ground comes out from under my feet. My arm was was pinned down under the student’s bodyweight and about three cops on top of him…I was prepared for my arm to snap that might sound dramatic, but I was terrified. I was on the ground, my glasses had been knocked off I was wearing a hat, it was ripped off my head. And there are just hands everywhere and voices are flying. I got I got hit in the nose, I busted my lip. And I’m yanking my arm free because I know they’re arresting the student I was attached to that much is obvious by now they’re wrenching his arm back to try to get him in the zip tie cuffs. And I’m just trying to free my arm because I don’t want it to snap in half. So they yank him one way and there’s hands on me and yank me another way, my arms free. So I feel pretty good. And next thing I know, I’m ripped. Apart from the situation apart from the line of students, and I’m blown away from group and, you know, told You’re under arrest. They rip my backpack off my back and slap me in some zip ties. And, you know, they lead me to the the other side of the meadow… I think I was one of the first few to be up there” 

Harshbarger: Cameron has an auditory processing disorder and when she’s in loud crowds everything muffles together. Unable to hear what police were directing her to do she just stood on that hill with her hands zipped tied behind her back only able to watch.

Gray: “There was one woman sitting on the ground next to me and people a few yards down who were standing. You know, and this cop comes up and he says, I’m going to ask you to sit said are you asking me to sit? said, you know, get on the ground. So I kneel and I was just stuck there watching my students, you know, my fellow students, my peers, my friends. Just fall apart. I couldn’t look away. But I think I missed a lot of it. You know, I think not blackout but until I watched videos back. I felt like I had no idea Do what was going on? You know, I was looking at the police around me, I was scanning the crowd, I was actually desperately, desperately searching for someone who could tell my sister that I had been arrested. Because, you know, I was no one will know, no one knew I was here. I didn’t tell anyone I was stopping by here, because I thought I was going to hang out, you know, for an hour or so after class and be on my way. So it was a flash of a lot of noise and fear and pain and desperation.”

Harshbarger: All Cameron could do was sit and watch as the line of arrested people grew longer. What felt like a minute to her was probably more like 20.

Gray: “And then, you know, two by two officers start coming up behind us grabbing our arms and you know, walk to the bus. And so I’m watching a couple students be brought off. And I turn my head to see where they’re taking them. You know, probably a jail bus, right? No, no, it was, um, it was an IU bus, one that I have used personally to get from class to class to, to take from one side of the campus to the other. I’m brought to my feet lead away, you know, and so I’m led up by the by the bus stops the stairs, there at the IMU stop. And across the street, there’s an IU bus, parked and I’m walking and I’m, you know, I’m trying to make a point of keeping my head high and, and, you know, looking my students and my fellow students in the eyes and just saying, you know, look at me, look, look at me Look, look at this, one by one they, load us up on the bus kind of let us you know, sit wherever. But it was it was just insane to sit in a seat that I have sat in countless times, you know, my past two years that IU and to suddenly be in the same seat, cuffed behind my back, you know, six police on the bus. Just because I was on dunn meadow using my voice.”

Harshbarger: We leave Cameron on that IU bus, tune in next week to hear part two of her story.

For WFHB this has been Annika Harshbarger.